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Exalted: How did anyone ever use these stat blocks?
2014-Feb-08, Saturday 14:56
I was recently poring over some of the Compasses of Terrestial Directions for Exalted 2e in order to pull out ideas for thaumaturgical rituals for that mortals game I was thinking about, and I noticed that Siakal, the western god of war, sacrifice, and sharks, had a bunch of prayer rituals to her written as thaumaturgy. Aha, I thought. I can go to the gods of the eastern forests and look them up, then do the same thing for them in case someone wants to run a priest of Caltia, the patron goddess of Halta, or one of her subordinate gods. So I flip through the book, look at her description, and then go (O_o) when I see her stat block.
( Click for huge text block )
So, yeah. After reading that, I can see the attraction the OSR has to stat blocks that can fit onto a single line. I mean, I get that the detail of an NPCs stat block should reflect the importance they have in the game, and that it's better for the rules to provide full stats because it's easier for GMs to chop out everything they don't want instead of coming up with new information that isn't provided, especially on the fly...but even so. Statting out every single NPC the same way that PCs are is good in a CRPG that can handle hundreds or thousands of discrete NPCs at the same time, but for a PnP RPG, there are much better ways to do things since NPCs and PCs don't fulfill the same function in game even if the PCs don't have any special narrative weight. I'm curious how they'll reduce all that to the simplified stat blocks that they're planning to on in Exalted 3e.
It does make me more interested in a mortals game, where I can reduce a lot of stats down to something like "Fightin' 3, Shootin' 4, Talkin' 3, Resistin' 5, Virtues: 2" and even full stat blocks won't have that many crazy powers. The most powerful beings the PCs would likely interact with would be low-power elementals, fair folk, or various god-blooded. A single Fair Folk Cataphract is a huge challenge for a group of mortals, and they'll never come into conflict with anyone like Caltia. Which is fine with me.
( Click for huge text block )
So, yeah. After reading that, I can see the attraction the OSR has to stat blocks that can fit onto a single line. I mean, I get that the detail of an NPCs stat block should reflect the importance they have in the game, and that it's better for the rules to provide full stats because it's easier for GMs to chop out everything they don't want instead of coming up with new information that isn't provided, especially on the fly...but even so. Statting out every single NPC the same way that PCs are is good in a CRPG that can handle hundreds or thousands of discrete NPCs at the same time, but for a PnP RPG, there are much better ways to do things since NPCs and PCs don't fulfill the same function in game even if the PCs don't have any special narrative weight. I'm curious how they'll reduce all that to the simplified stat blocks that they're planning to on in Exalted 3e.
It does make me more interested in a mortals game, where I can reduce a lot of stats down to something like "Fightin' 3, Shootin' 4, Talkin' 3, Resistin' 5, Virtues: 2" and even full stat blocks won't have that many crazy powers. The most powerful beings the PCs would likely interact with would be low-power elementals, fair folk, or various god-blooded. A single Fair Folk Cataphract is a huge challenge for a group of mortals, and they'll never come into conflict with anyone like Caltia. Which is fine with me.
